(From our correspondent in Brussels) “Our societies suffer from fragmentation and the will to live together is no longer taken for granted, in our cities as well as in the EU. This is why our roots, our feeling of belonging, our common heritage and our diversity deserve more attention and a more honest discussion”. This was said by Tibor Navracsics, EU Commissioner for education and culture, who this afternoon spoke at the conference promoted in Brussels by Comece about the Christian heritage of Europe, as part of the European Year of Cultural Heritage, chosen by the European Union for 2018. “Behind the nice facades, behind our best museums and our finest churches, there’s a story that tells us who we are, if only we decided to read it. There are precious suggestions about our past and our future, there are our roots, if only we chose to see them”, the Commissioner said. “A heritage of culture and traditions that make up our current identity”. And “a heritage that we must get to know, to cultivate and share, not just to contemplate it as if we were living in a museum. Our European heritage is and deserves much more than this”. Yet, “all around us – this is Commissioner Navracsics’s bitter consideration –, we see social fragmentation, ignorance, unawareness of our history and a clear inability to use our heritage to boost social inclusion and to help us rediscover the value of our European values”.
“If nowadays, for example, some of our young people are radicalised in a few months’ time and rebel against their own communities to commit the most atrocious crimes, doesn’t this somehow happen because we failed to promote our common values and create a feeling of belonging for them? If our social inclusion policies do not work, doesn’t it happen because we have forgotten to use our rich, different identities to come together? If so many citizens ask themselves what it means to be European, isn’t it because, instead of defining and explaining, we have taken it for granted that they knew?”. “The European Year of Cultural Heritage – the EU Commissioner then ended – will be a success only if we use our cultural treasures to answer these thorny questions. Only if we take this chance as a call to share and love a common past and to build a better Europe for the future”.